Sunday 02 • 18 • 18

Scripture Reading

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall be any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who was raised? Who is at the right hand of God? Who indeed is interceding for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor heights nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus our lord. — Romans 8:31-39

This is the word of the Lord. Amen. Thanks, Clayton. You did a great job. It's wonderful.

Opening Prayer

Lord Jesus, this is a powerful passage. As I come to preach it, I feel like I should take my shoes off because of just how rich and deep the words that Clayton just read are. Lord, I ask that you would be with us as we consider this passage. Be with me as I preach it. Lord, it's amazing to me that you would ever have me preach something like this. So, Lord, move and work. Speak to all of us through your word and enrich us and build us up in Christ Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.

Sermon Introduction

Well, this morning, we are continuing our We Still Can't series. If you're just visiting with our church, here's a little background. About a year ago, we launched an initiative where we shared the vision of our church and encouraged people to buy in, and we called that vision initiative "We Can't."

When we were coming up with that name, everybody that had anything to do with marketing said, "You can't call it that." And then we said, "How ironic. You're right. We get it. It's super negative, but we're going to call it that anyway." The reason that we were so convinced that we had to call it that is because we didn't want this to come across as something like, "Hey, let's pull together and pull this off—this grand vision that God has given our church." We needed to point to the fact that we have no hope of doing this apart from God. So calling it "We Can't" is really the only way we can do something like this.

We're in the middle of revisiting that initiative, which started a year ago. We've done two sermons. Jeff preached two weeks ago and kicked this off with a sermon called "We Can't Ask Too Much," which dealt with prayer and encouraged us to pray for God's work through our church. Then he preached the second sermon titled "We Can't Trust Too Much," which looked at us putting faith in God as we move into this initiative.

This sermon that I'm preaching this morning is titled "We Can't Lose," looking at the sufficiency of God from Romans 8.

Connection to Romans Series

If you've been with our church for a while, you also know that we took a break from another sermon series on the book of Romans, which happened to break right before this passage, in order to enter into the We Still Can't sermon series. So in case you're wondering, yes, this sermon is also a part of the sermon series on Romans. It is a sermon that is connecting two sermon series.

Now, I went to seminary and they told us very clearly: never do something jumbled up like this. It's a bad idea in terms of communication. It's just all over the place. I'm pretty sure that if I went to my professors in seminary and said, "Hey, I'm thinking of doing that thing you said not to do, but we're going to use the end of Romans 8," they would have said, "Well, if you're going to do anything like that with any passage, it has to be the end of Romans 8."

Bottom line is that this passage just won't fit in one sermon series. Romans 8 is often referred to as the climax of the book of Romans, often referred to as the climax of the New Testament. And the end of Romans 8 is the climactic end of that climax. If you read the whole chapter, it steadily builds in emphasis and power and then it concludes with these words that Clayton just read for us. These are incredibly encouraging lines from scripture.

When I was in high school, we took a band trip my senior year to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We were marching in a Christmas parade. I played the trumpet. So we're in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and we're driving around and they drop us off for a little while and let us do some shopping. I've got like $10 to do some shopping in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I'm really excited as a high school student. We're walking around and we passed this big crane that they had set up for people to go bungee jumping. And there's a big sign in front of it that says people 18 and older only. Well, the week before I had turned 18. So I saw that sign and I said, hey, guys, I could do that. All of my friends in marching band were just kind of like, oh, you should. And I was kind of like, well, and I was looking at the prices. It's $75. I would do it if I could afford it, but I only got $10.

Almost immediately all my friends were like, I got $5. I got 10. I got 15, says you won't do it. And before I knew it, I was climbing the stairs of a rickety built structure and crane that was designed for people to go bungee jumping in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I get to the top of this structure and I look down at my chest and I can literally see my heart beating. The guy who was there, he must have seen it too because he immediately encouraged me to take a deep breath and he started walking me through all of the safety features that they had thrown together in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He said, now see this harness? This harness is designed to hold this weight. You don't weigh that much, do you? No. I weigh way less. Okay. Good. Now see this harness? This is a second harness. If that one fails, you've got the second harness. There's that. And here's the bungee cord. Feel it. Feel how thick it is. That is really tested for such and such weight. So you're going to be fine. Look down there. There's this big inflated balloon type thing. And he said, truth be told, we've kind of tested it out. If you just fell without the bungee cord into that thing, you'd be fine. So he just goes through all these kinds of things to reassure me. And long story short, I did it. It's one of my favorite two truths and a lie thing to say about myself.

The Apostle Paul as Reassurance

The apostle Paul here is functioning a little bit like that operator. He is offering layer upon layer of encouragement with regard to the certainty and security that we have in Jesus Christ and he does it very poetically and dramatically through this series of rhetorical questions. He keeps asking these questions and they're not questions that he has any doubt about. He could have just stated the truth, but he's asking the questions because he knows that we are asking the questions. Is this really going to work, Paul? Is this Jesus thing really going to hold? And the answer emphatically, as he considers the grand scope of the gospel which he has laid out through the previous eight chapters—and this is the conclusion of the eighth—is emphatically yes. Absolutely.

I want to look at four specific rhetorical questions that he asks and affirms the answer for us as a church this morning. I'm going to couch this in the "we can't lose" sermon series. For those of you who are taking notes, here's the outline. The four statements that he comes at with the questions are:

Number one: We can't lose because there is no opposition to God's purpose.

Number two: We can't lose because there is no limitation to God's generosity.

Number three: We can't lose because there is no condemnation for God's people.

Number four: We can't lose because there's no separation between God and his people.

So just a helpful way of remembering that—if you remember from the nineties, the SNL skit Cajun man with Adam Sandler—that's no opposition, no limitation, no condemnation, and no separation. You'll never forget it now. I know it's cheesy.

The First Question: God's Opposition

Let's look at the first point in verse 31. Here's the rhetorical question:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? — Romans 8:31

If God is for us, who can be against us? It's the first question. What Paul is saying essentially here is that if we have God as our ally, no one can oppose us. Let's be clear about something. He's not saying that if God is for us, we won't have any opposition. We know that from experience. We know that as we follow Christ that opposition comes.

Opposition comes from all sorts of different ways and all sorts of different directions, and God's people experience it throughout the ages in all sorts of different ways. Look at the Bible. Read the whole thing and it's just story after story of opposition that comes to God and his people. There's all kinds of opposition. So he's not saying that we just don't have any opposition. What he's doing is he's talking trash. He's saying, if we have God on our side, ain't nobody going to stand a chance.

And here's the beautiful thing. Paul has highlighted this in other places and he knows this to be true. It's true throughout Scripture. He knows that God is a judo style fighter. He is the greatest judo fighter that the universe has ever seen. Of course, he's God, right? Do you understand what judo is? Judo is a form of martial arts where you use the force of someone else's attack for your benefit, right? So if someone throws a punch, you use their throwing of that punch, and you cock out an elbow and as they miss you, they run into your elbow. The force of their punch actually hits them back, right? That's what God does. That's what God does again and again and again through Scripture.

Think about the Old Testament. Think about every case of opposition that comes to God's people. Take Egypt. There's this all-powerful pharaoh with all these all-powerful Egyptian gods. He's very confident in his all-powerfulness and his Egyptian gods. So what does he do? He basically issues penalty after penalty to God's people. And what does God do? God uses each of his proclamations against God's people against him and his gods to reveal that God is ultimate and that God's people will ultimately be victorious despite this all-powerful pharaoh and his Egyptian gods. He used pharaoh's punches against him.

How about the Philistines? They got a big, bad fighter named Goliath. He's seven feet tall. He can beat anybody, and he's coming with all of his armies and this big, bad giant against God's people. And what does God do? God uses the bigness and badness of Goliath against the Philistines. They're coming and they are all confident in this guy, and then what does he do? He leads them to a single person combat to decide the outcome. And who do they put in? They put in this little boy. The little boy proves that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. God uses this punch against the Philistines and for the benefit of his people.

One of my favorite stories is where the people of God were starving in the city and God brought a Syrian siege to solve the problem of starvation within the city. The Syrian siege came and God spooks the soldiers and they run off. The people come out of the city where they're starving to death and what do they find? All the storehouses of the soldiers that were laying siege to them, and they feast on it. God brought a siege in order to feed his people. He takes whatever opposition comes and he uses it for the good of his people.

God's Judo Style

If God is for us, nothing can be against us. If God is for us, the forces that are working against us, unbeknownst to them, are actually in the employ of our ally God. He's using our enemies for our good purposes. And there's nowhere that you see that more clearly than at the cross of Christ, right? The cross where our great enemy, Satan, manipulated all sorts of different things in order to arrange for the sinfulness of man to try God himself and hang him on a cross, killing him. This moment that Satan thought was going to be his ultimate victory, this great moment of triumph, God uses that and turns that into what? The moment of Satan's ultimate undoing. The death blow that he thought he was dealing to God became his own death blow. God's a judo style fighter. If God is for us, who can be against us?

And we know this to be true in our lives. There's all kinds of opposition that comes, and when opposition comes, have we not experienced multiple times, believers, that God has used opposition for our good?

A Word for Those Struggling

I want to just take a moment and pause here and say, I know that there are some of you who are walking through heavy opposition right now. Some really challenging things. I've experienced some heavy opposition in my life, some challenging things, but I'll be honest. There are some things that some of you are walking through in this congregation that I have nothing to say to. It's hard what some of you are experiencing. And I know that the suffering and the hardship that comes from the opposition that's coming at you is really intense.

Passages like this can seem like trite sayings when you're in the midst of suffering and pain and hardship. I don't know what it looks like and I don't know how hard it is to walk through some of the things you're experiencing with faith. But what I do know is that the apostle Paul, with all of his apostolic authority in the midst of some of the most intense suffering that the church has ever seen, penned these words in an effort to reassure people who are going through hardships like yours.

To remind you that if God is for you, who can be against you? There is no opposition. Even though I don't know what it's like to experience what some of you are experiencing, I know with certainty—the same certainty that Paul had—that there is no opposition that cannot be swept up into the grand purpose of what God is doing. And that even as opposition comes, God is planning and has planned for maturity, for how he is going to pivot off of that opposition and dunk right in its face for your benefit and for his glory.

Brothers and sisters, if God is for us, who can be against us? It's the first encouragement that the apostle Paul has for us this morning. Let's look at the second.

He moves on to verse 32.

He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:32

I've summarized this to say there's no limit, no limitation to God's generosity. If God has given us his Son, won't he give us everything? The thrust of Paul's argument here—you have to understand that for the apostle Paul, Jesus Christ was everything. If God has given up his Son to die for us, if he's given us him, he's already given us the cake. Will he not also give us the icing? Will God withhold anything from us whom he's given his Son up for? Absolutely not.

You don't make that kind of sacrifice and then hold back and be stingy on the fringes. Paul is essentially saying that if God's going to give us the substance of himself, the person of Jesus, and offer him up as a sacrifice, he's not going to withhold anything from us. He's going to give us everything. He's promised to do that, and we know that it's true because the down payment itself—Jesus Christ—is too substantial for him to back out of this.

He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.

That work began with Jesus Christ offering himself up on a cross. God hasn't given up on this project. He's going to see it all the way through to us having everything.

On the Prosperity Gospel

Now I have to pause here because I know that in this country and all around the world, there's this thing called the prosperity gospel where passages like this are used to make God into a little genie that we rub and he pops out and says, "Hey, what do you want?" and he gives us whatever we want. Some pastors have preached it this way: basically, if you believe hard enough and if you pray the right way, then passages like this just promise that God will give you everything that you want, your heart's desires. That's not how this works.

Let me see if I can illustrate it with a story. When I was a little kid, I grew up in Miami, Florida during the time of Miami Vice. It was a glorious time, the eighties. Don Johnson made a mullet look cool for a little while, not wearing socks and all these things. Part of how he did that was he had a white Ferrari Testarossa that he drove all around while he battled crime on the show. And as a little kid, I watched that show all the time. I loved that show, and I loved that car. Like most little boys, I was drawn to the car.

I remember my stepsister, whom I grew up with, watching that one episode with me. When it was done, I told my sister, "I don't care what it takes—when I am grown up, I am going to drive a Ferrari Testarossa." She just laughed and said, "No, you won't." So she was being a sister, and it was game on. We had arguments back and forth about that when I was a little kid all day long. Used to drive my parents crazy. They were like, "Shut up about the Ferrari Testarossa."

I remember going into my room after one of these arguments with my sister and praying very earnestly and sincerely, "Lord Jesus, I need a Ferrari Testarossa." And I had all the good reasons. My sister needs to be humbled. I'm gonna need to get from point A to point B quickly. Maybe I'll battle drug dealers in South Florida. I don't know.

Like, I had all these arguments and I remember praying that many times. So, news flash, in case those of you who aren't paying attention to my life, I do not currently drive a Ferrari Testarossa, something that my sister likes to remind me of every time we get together. I drive a Prius and a minivan. And last Sunday, Jeff Bradford put eyelashes on my Prius and I drove around the streets of Downtown Raleigh, very much the antithesis of Don Johnson. So has God not answered my very sincere prayer? Is he who gave his son? Is he not also giving me all things? Actually, he's given me way more than I asked for. You see, I now have a wife with five kids. Ferrari Testarossa is not the best means of transportation for that crew. But it's beautiful that he's given me that. Moreover, he's given me my sister whose humility I prayed for fervently, and it's brought humility to me. And so you see, God's actually given me more than I asked for. Greater things.

I think we have a tendency to view God a little bit like a leprechaun. You know how leprechauns work? You catch them and they grant you three wishes and they grant your wishes literally. Whatever you ask for, they give you. But they always give it to you in some sort of way that sticks it to you. I don't know if that's because they're Irish or because they think you're after their pot of gold or why. But I think we have a tendency to think that's the way God views our prayers. That's the way God interacts with us like a leprechaun waiting for us to ask for something so he can give it to us literally and stick it to us. But in fact, God is the exact opposite of a leprechaun. First of all, he doesn't limit wishes. But secondly, he takes our requests and instead of tracing them and finding some sort of loophole in order to curse us with them, he takes our humble requests and he finds ways through them to bless us.

Jeff, several weeks ago, preached about praying and we can't pray too much. That's so true. We have a God who is so rich in his generosity that as we go before him and we ask for things, we can trust that he's looking for our best interest in our own prayers. And it's important to apply this to our initiative, because we, the leaders of this church, we spend a lot of time thinking and praying about how do we lead in this? What is the next phase of our church's life look like? How do we be true to Scripture in terms of how we set goals for our church? And we think we're being biblical in all of that and we think that the things that we're inviting you to pray for are the things that are in the best interest of the kingdom of God. But truth be told, I'll just pull back the curtain. The people that Jesus Christ has appointed to lead this church are human beings. Jesus knows what he's doing even among our humble leadership.

When we go to God with this weekend initiative and we're trusting him with all sorts of things, many of you have asked, are these the right things? Are we going at this the right way? These are good questions to ask. It's good for us to evaluate that according to Scripture. But we know that we can move forward and we can advance our work as a church together trusting that even as we're searching God and praying to him and asking him to bless us—even if we're asking in the wrong ways—God is going to trace our prayers and use them for our benefit and his glory.

Several of you wrestle with prayer. You're kind of like, why would I pray? Why do I need to pray? What's the point? God already knows all of my needs. Doesn't the Bible say that? Well, the point of prayer is this: God wants you to ask and he wants your askings to be the vehicle through which he blesses you. He wants to have that interaction with you to reveal his generosity to you. Don't miss that. You have the opportunity to pray to a God who gave his son for you. Will he not also give you all things?

The Third Reassurance

Let's look at the third reassurance that Paul gives. He comes in verses 33 through 34.

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is it to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us. — Romans 8:33-34

You know, I think we can ask the question, hey, this whole Christian thing, like our whole salvation, our whole being unified with God and Christ, the hope that we have in that—it's one thing to ask the question: is there any outside force that can mess that up?

It's pretty easy to say, "Yeah, God's the biggest force and if he's done this, no one can undo it." But I think another thing that we can wrestle with is this: as we start to consider that, we think, "Well, but what about us? Isn't there our side of this thing? Couldn't we mess this up? Couldn't it be that at some point we do something that really throws this whole thing off?"

Of course, the apostle Paul says, "No."

Who is it that will bring any charge against God's elect? Who is the one who condemns? Who judges? They're all on our side.

Paul is using legal terminology here. He's painting a picture of the eternal courtroom of heaven in which God sits as judge and Satan or others bring charges against those who are God's elect. Jesus functions as the defense attorney at the right hand of God.

I want to be really clear on this point. I think a lot of us envision Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, and we kind of get the seventies-like flowing locks of hair Jesus who's super nice and sweet. We picture him up next to God and he's just saying to God, "Hey, hey, be merciful to them. Be merciful to them because God, we want to be all about mercy. We want to show mercy to them, and I'm Jesus and I'm all about mercy, so God, let's show them mercy, right?" And it's almost like he's begging God for mercy.

That's not the picture that Paul is painting here. Paul is not painting a picture in which Jesus begs for mercy on our behalf. God himself has been merciful in sending Jesus, but that mercy plays out as Jesus in that eternal courtroom stands at the right hand of God pleading the merit of his blood. It's not asking for mercy for us. He's asking for justice—justice that is built upon the atoning sacrifice that he himself has offered.

Which means that when Satan or anyone else brings any charge before the throne of God, Jesus doesn't say, "Hey, be merciful to them." Jesus says, "I paid for that. That's mine. The penalty has been paid, O Just One. You must act justly because you are a just God, and I have earned justice for this people."

There are some of you, maybe me included, who from time to time wrestle with whether your sin can mess this up. Whether something you've done has somehow thrown the entire cosmic plan of God himself off kilter. Whether the sin you've committed somehow rises above the level of Jesus's blood. Paul wants to assure you: there is nothing that you can be condemned for. The justice that has been earned for you in Jesus's blood far surpasses any sin that you can commit. There is no way to sin your way out of this.

There is no condemnation for those of you who are in Christ Jesus. Be reassured.

The Promise That Nothing Can Separate Us

Now let's look at the fourth rhetorical question that's meant to assure us. This one's a little longer. It begins in verses 35 and continues through verse 39.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Now in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This last series of rhetorical questions is meant to reassure us that there is no separation. There's nothing that can tear us apart from God because we are bound by the love that we have from Christ Jesus himself.

I want you to note that this question is geared towards circumstances. The first question was, "What about opposition?" The second question was about the limits of God's generosity. The third question was about our ability to hold up our end of the bargain. This fourth thing is about circumstances: "What about the circumstances that we find ourselves in?"

Paul begins this series by considering all these things in light of this question, "Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ?" He begins with the circumstances that he himself finds himself in and that the early church found themselves in. They were experiencing intense persecution—intense persecution from Rome, from left and right, all over the place.

Paul begins where the people are. Where are you this morning? What are the circumstances that you're finding yourself in that are causing you to question whether you can be separated from God's love?

I know there are some of you experiencing circumstances that are pretty severe. There are things like tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. But Paul here is addressing a community that was experiencing persecution linked to their identification with Christ. The early church was identifying with Christ and then the Romans were responding to that with very real, very physical, very intense persecution.

I want you to note something really interesting that Paul does. This passage, arguably the most victorious statement of our Christian reality in all of scripture, has embedded in the middle of it a quotation of a psalm of lament. Do you see that? That's incredibly strange. Why is Paul quoting a Psalm of lament in the middle of his rhetorically poetic exaltation of all the riches and promises that we have in Christ? He's doing that because he realizes that the struggle is real, friends. The struggle is real and it's very appropriate to lament even in the midst of struggle. That's okay. And yet, even in the midst of lamenting, you surround that with the certainty of the hope that you have in Christ. Victory in the midst of lament—Paul, is that appropriate? It is appropriate. There's nothing more Christian than that if you think about it, because the cross is that. The cross is a moment of great lament and a moment of great victory.

The Lie That Suffering Means Separation

Some of you are going through hardships and asking the same question that the early church asked and that Paul was trying to address: Isn't the fact that circumstances in my life are so crummy indicative of the fact that I have been separated from the love of God, that he's given up on us? Isn't that the case? All these bad things are happening. Isn't it indicative that God's separate from me? The answer is no. Quite the opposite, actually.

Jesus Christ invited his followers to pick up the cross and follow him. It's very appropriate to expect that suffering and trial and hardship will come the closer you are to Christ. The more bound you are to him, the more likely you are to experience suffering. And if you're experiencing suffering, that should reassure you that Christ has you in his grip. You who are unified in his suffering will also be unified in his glory. And God is gloriously using your suffering. You may not see it. That may be really hard to see. It's really hard for me to say that to some of you, but imagine the early church. Think about their suffering. They were being fed to lions. They were being crucified in the arena. Left and right, it must have seemed incredibly hopeless. And yet God used that to bring down the Roman Empire. The pagan Roman Empire was brought to its knees through a bunch of Christians suffering in the view of the public. It was missional suffering that God used for his advancement. Their suffering was very much in the mark of Christ, as is ours, brothers and sisters.

Nothing Can Separate Us

As we experience persecution and hardship, as we move through the trials and hardships of this life—that's how this section ends. Starting in verse 37, Paul moves from talking about the persecution and immediate experience of the Christians he was writing to, to a consideration of all things that could possibly ever separate us from the love of God. He does these in poetic pairs. Listen to them. He starts with death or life. Can death nor life separate us from the love of God?

Death is the ultimate divider, right? There are some of you walking through a grieving process because you've lost a loved one recently. There are a number of you in this congregation and it feels like death is the ultimate divider. Someone dies and you don't see them again. But here's the truth: our God who's a judo-style fighter in Jesus Christ—guess what? He's pivoted off of death and he's taken death, who is the great divider, and turned him into the great unifier. It is through death that we are reunified with Christ and with God and with each other for eternity. So can death separate us from the love of Christ? Nope. Sorry, death. God just judo chopped you and turned you into a unifier.

What about life? As we're wandering through life, we're struck with all sorts of trials and temptations, all sorts of circumstances one after another. It's a long process. Can life separate us? No. Paul says life can't separate you.

What about his next section? Angels or rulers—can be translated as demons. He shifts from thinking about things that we struggle with in this life to the spiritual realm.

We often don't know that much about the spiritual realm. So isn't it possible that there's something going on spiritually that we just don't see that could separate us from the love of God? Angels, demons, something like that? Paul says, no. Nothing in the spiritual realm can separate us from the love of Christ.

What about the present or the future? Things present, things to come, right? He's now moving from the spiritual to thinking about the fourth dimension—time. There's all the things that are going on in the present that we know, and then there's all the things that are going to happen that we don't know. Can any of those things separate us from the love of God? No. Nothing in the fourth dimension can separate you from the love of God.

But what about the third dimension? He shifts then to heights or depths. Now he's thinking about three-dimensional space. He's moved from time to space. Space is pretty big. It's a big universe. We've learned more and more about it as we've gone on as humanity. It's a big universe. We haven't encountered anything that can separate us from the love of God yet, but we don't know about everything in the universe. I keep seeing sci-fi movies on Netflix that talk about aliens. The Cloverfield Paradox, right? Can that separate us from the love of God in Christ? Paul says, no. Netflix can't dream of anything out there in the universe that's real that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. You don't have to worry about that. Neither time nor space. Nothing can separate us.

What about powers? There's powers at work in the world. There's governmental powers. There's secret organizations working to undermine all sorts of things. There's the media. There's whatever kind of powers you can dream of. I spend a lot of nights sitting up worrying about powers—whatever the latest power is that's weighing in on me. Can that separate us from the love of God in Christ? No. Powers can't separate us from the love of God in Christ.

And then the final thing that he considers is anything else in all creation. Just in case I missed anything, Paul says, I just want to reassure you: God, who created all of it—the heavens and the earth, things spiritual, things temporal, things physical—He created all of those things. And He who is the author of the love that sent His Son to die for you will not allow any of the things that He's created to separate you from that love which He poured out in Jesus Christ.

The Victory Run

This is important for us to consider as we move through this. We can't lose. And here's why. Initiatives like this oftentimes can be viewed as leaders like me getting up and saying to you, "Hey, we can't do this without your help. We need you to come on and help us advance God's kingdom. Don't you want to help us advance God's kingdom? We need you to pull this whole redemption of the world that Jesus planned and called us to."

We don't need you because we can't lose. The Olympics were this week, and probably like many of you, I was glued to the TV for all of it. My favorite part so far has been the half pipe snowboarding. Did you watch that? Chloe Kim nailed it. Sean White nailed it. And there's a juxtaposition I want to reveal to you between those two.

Sean White, when he was getting ready to go on his final run, had another guy that had beaten him in the previous run. It's three runs, right? So he was one point behind and he had fallen on his second run. He was standing up there getting ready to drop in for his third run. He waited four years because he finished fourth at Sochi. He's just hanging out there waiting for them to give him the green light to go. The announcers are saying, "Sean White, his four-year journey back to the Olympics. This is the run of his life. How will he stand up to the pressure?" And I'm watching this with my wife Katie, and I turn to her and say, "Katie, I can't take it. I want this guy to win gold so badly."

With Chloe Kim, it was totally different. She had knocked it out of the park on her first run. She had a really high score. By the time it was her third run, everybody else had gone and she had already blown them out of the water. She got up there and the announcers were saying, "She's already got the gold medal. This is a victory run."

That's what the Weekend Initiative is. That's what God is doing through this church. That's what we're inviting you into: a victory run.

We are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loved us. We can't lose. This initiative is a reminder that we can't lose, and you're invited to come on in. Throw it all in and let's see what happens.

By the way, Kim blew a record out of the water on her last run. I think she scored a 98 something out of a 100. I don't know what God's going to do through our church, but I know this: there's no limits to his generosity. He gave his son for us, and I am excited to see what he does through the life of our church, through the lives of each of you.

Go forth with the assurance that comes from this passage and from the hope we have in Christ. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.